5 ms·

The AMD Ryzen platform holds so much promise. There's just one problem: all of their consumer chipset motherboards are terrible. Really, really flakey and bad.

by scurvy 6y ago

The AMD Ryzen platform holds so much promise. There's just one problem: all of their consumer chipset motherboards are terrible. Really, really flakey and bad. If you're used to slapping in name-brand memory to a board and booting it up, LOL good luck with AMD! Your options for current gen Ryzens are: x570 -> Requires active cooling (fans) on the chipset because it throws off too much heat. The proprietray fan will die and your motherboard needs replacing. Congrats! Also, the PCIe lane configurations are weird (x8 x8 x8). x470 -> Don't even look at your memory the wrong way if you want it to boot. Also, you need an older gen Ryzen/Athlon to update the BIOS to something that works with Ryzen 3000. Sure, there are stickers all over the box touting 'Ryzen 3000 compatibility!' but that's only after you update the BIOS. The BIOS the board ships with won't work at all. b450 -> Dicier to run new stuff on such an older platform. The implementations are supposedly power weak for higher core count 3900/3950 CPUs. AMD really dropped the ball on these chipset. They're the things that are leading to terrible user experiences and why folks end up going back to Intel after countless dollars wasted on shipping, RMAs, and swapping gear. No motherboard manufacturer actually designs anything. They just bundle chips together and change logos in the BIOS. Some might have a "flashback" button that works on half the boards, but there's little to differentiate one from the other. If you want something that just works and is fast, stick with Intel because their chipsets are better. I'm writing this on a 3900x, too... EDIT: Since many are doubting what I went through, let me list the permutations of boards, DIMMs, and CPUs. CPUs: 3900x and 220GE DIMMs: Corsair Ballistix, G.Skill FlareX, Samsung ECC (unbuffered) Boards: x470 Taichi and Hero VII I finally got my third Taichi to boot with a 220GE to the point that I could flash a BIOS to something "stable" for the 3900x. I've literally built hundreds of servers and PCs in my lifetime (including AMD Romes). I know what I'm doing. This ecosystem just isn't mature yet!

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
What are you on? >If you're used to slapping in name-brand memory to a board and booting it up[...] Yeah, I am and that's exactly what I did with a new Ryzen CPU. How is this shit the top comment?
- scurvy 6y ago
  Mobo makers are hiding behind their QVL rather than making a functioning product. "Sorry, we only tested this version of Crucial memory, not that version." Never mind the fact that they use the same in-house Crucial stuff underneath, changes are largely chip packaging, etc. Almost all of the memory on the market comes from one of the last 5 companies actually making DRAM (not counting Shenzen specials). Anything from Crucial, Samsung, Hynix, etc should work. It's JEDEC DDR4 compatible. Period. Hiding a bad product because a DIMM isn't on the QVL is low-class. I'm not even talking about XMP stuff. I'm talking about booting with basic 2400/2666 stuff. "Yeah that's good RAM but not on our QVL. Get bent."
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    >Mobo makers are hiding behind their QVL rather than making a functioning product. How do you go from, "one particular mobo from one manufacturer is bad" to "all mobo makers are bad" and you attribute some sneaky malicious motive behind this. That's too much anecdote and emotional spin for me.
    - scurvy 6y ago
      I'm saying the AMD chipsets are bad, the mobo manufacturers don't really do anything different from each other these days, and they're hiding behind the very few parts that they qualify for their boards. If the RAM comes from a brand name, it should work in the motherboard regardless of QVL. Don't get these problems on AMD server/workstation platforms. You don't get them anywhere on Intel. But hey, the main article here also gave the nod to Intel in chipset/driver so I must just be all emotional spin.
na85 6y ago
Conversely, when I built a gaming rig last year I just slapped some Kingston memory, a Vega 64, and a Ryzen onto my x470 and everything Just Worked. But then I'm not an overclocker and the only time I go into the BIOS is when something breaks and/or I need to change the boot order. Maybe the quality control is what's at issue?
- scurvy 6y ago
  QC could definitely be an issue. If you built yours last year, it was probably with a 2000-series Ryzen? Those were easier to work with given the gear at the time. The 3000-series and x470's are definitely a problem. Here's a clip of someone with a lot of time on his hands who says, "Oh yeah just let it boot loop for 7-10 minutes then it will finally work."[0] Honestly come on, that's not right. There's still something with what's in the inventory pipeline. If you read the negative reviews, you'll see reports of "I RMA'd twice and only the third board worked." Not one or two and more than a few. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HstBneFf4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HstBneFf4g
  - rumanator 6y ago
    > Here's a clip of someone with a lot of time on his hands who says, "Oh yeah just let it boot loop for 7-10 minutes then it will finally work."[0] If you read the comments you'll find a lot of people stating 9 months ago that the problem is fixed with a BIOS update.
neogodless 6y ago
Is this a thing? I know it's anecdotal but three friends and I all built systems with X470 chipsets (some 2700X and one with a 3900X) and none of us had any issues whatsoever. This is the first I've heard of anything beyond the need for cooling for the X570.
Exmoor 6y ago
This is all pretty much FUD. > x570 -> Requires active cooling (fans) on the chipset because it throws off too much heat. The proprietray fan will die and your motherboard needs replacing. AMD does require fans on the chipsets for X570 boards, but different board makers have treated this differently. My understanding is that some boards don't spin it up unless you're putting some serious PCIE 4.0 bandwidth in. Either way, "The fan will die and needs replacing" may be true someday (as it would be with any fan), but is not a guarantee. >x470 -> Don't even look at your memory the wrong way if you want it to boot. Also, you need an older gen Ryzen/Athlon to update the BIOS to something that works with Ryzen 3000. Sure, there are stickers all over the box touting 'Ryzen 3000 compatibility!' but that's only after you update the BIOS. The BIOS the board ships with won't work at all. First gen Ryzen (1000 series chips) had some memory compatibility issues, but 2000 and 3000 chips haven't had many issues. It's true that you needed to do a BIOS upgrade on x470/B450 boards when 3000 series chips were released, but those stickers indicate that the board maker installed a newer BIOS and they should work out of the box. Unless you manage to find an X470 board that's been sitting on the shelf since before last July any x470 board you buy today is extremely likely to be compatible with all currently released Ryzen chips out of the box. > b450 -> Dicier to run new stuff on such an older platform. The implementations are supposedly power weak for higher core count 3900/3950 CPUs. 3000 series chips use a smaller process and are more power efficient per-core than 2000 and 1000 series chips, so you should have no issue running an 8 core chip in a B450 board. 12-core and 16-core chips might have some issues, but who buys a $79 motherboard and sticks a $500/$900 CPU in it?
- scurvy 6y ago
  >First gen Ryzen (1000 series chips) had some memory compatibility issues, but 2000 and 3000 chips haven't had many issues. It's true that you needed to do a BIOS upgrade on x470/B450 boards when 3000 series chips were released, but those stickers indicate that the board maker installed a newer BIOS and they should work out of the box. Unless you manage to find an X470 board that's been sitting on the shelf since before last July any x470 board you buy today is extremely likely to be compatible with all currently released Ryzen chips out of the box.< I went through a pair of x470 Taichi's from Amazon last month. Both had non-compatible BIOS that wouldn't work with 3000-series. One so old that Dr Debug wouldn't even do anything. Just blank. It's not just me. Read the negative product reviews of almost any x470 boards, and you'll see memory and non-POST issues very recently (followed by the response macro from mfg'er saying everything is fine just use 1 DIMM, etc). It's very much a crapshoot with AMD chipsets. You get a good one and everything's great. You get a few bad ones and you're stuck in swap/return/RMA hell. Also, how can it be FUD when it's exactly what I went through? Edit: The "Ryzen 3000 compatible" stickers do NOT mean it will work out of the box. It means that it CAN work...after you update the BIOS with an old CPU. AMD will offer you a CPU "boot kit" to get it going, but you're risking on missing out on many 30 day return windows with shipping, covid19, processing, etc. Avoid it all and just get an Intel until the next refresh.
jsgo 6y ago
Can't speak for anyone else, but I have a 570 board I think (MSI, I think, Phantom Gaming 4) with 2700x CPU. I have 4 sticks of 16GB ECC RAM (can't remember brand either, looked at the PG4's page where it lists compatible RAM) and they worked fine. I don't know if the fact that I was looking at said recommended list is what negates the issue you're talking about, but I had minimal issues in my build (mine was from also including a PCIe to 8 SATA port card. Moved the main drive off of it, installed the drivers and started working fine). Initially tried to do a Windows VM w/ GeForce 1080 but scrapped it after driver issues with the device in VM (apparently, Nvidia doesn't want non-Quadra GPUs in VMs).
nitsky 6y ago
I have had an X570 with a 3900X for a few months. Everything has worked perfectly so far.
bitL 6y ago
Add in x399, so many problems I had with ASUS Zenith Extreme I didn't see since original Athlon days.
jchw 6y ago
For anyone wondering about anecdotes to the contrary, I slapped random DDR4 DIMMs into my x470 no problem whatsoever. I heard of issues with original Ryzen, but not 3000, and you’re probably best ignoring the FUD and just going for it. (FWIW: I’ve built 2 Ryzen 2000 and 2 Ryzen 3000 boxes, all on x470 and B450. No RAM issues.)
zrm 6y ago
> Since many are doubting what I went through It's not that people are doubting your experience, it's that the Intel boards aren't any better. Many of the Intel boards also need a BIOS update to support later CPUs than they were originally released with, when they support them at all. DDR4 memory is finicky as heck. People end up having to RMA Intel boards all the time. It's largely caused by the motherboard makers losing the ability to differentiate themselves. Half of what used to be on the motherboard is now integrated into modern CPUs and the other half is in the chipset which is now also made by the CPU manufacturer. Two motherboards with the same chipset are largely fungible so they have to compete on price and the quality suffers. It's a general problem and buying any consumer motherboard these days is kind of a crapshoot. Here's a motherboard with 5 eggs and 50 reviews: https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813121180 https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813121180 It's a Pentium 4 motherboard from ~15 years ago. See if you can find a current generation Intel motherboard on there with 5 eggs from half that many reviews. I don't see any.
- scurvy 6y ago
  I understand what you're saying about the P4 boards and that largely echos what I'm saying. The vendor chipsets are bad, AMD's are worse than Intel's, and there's not much a mobo vendor can do. Intel boards do need upgrades to work with newer CPU's. This is true. But their updates actually work when they say they add support. Go back to July 2019 and read all the forum posts and YouTube videos of everyone complaining about Ryzen 3000, "Well Gigabyte said this release works...but it doesn't." And on and on. It's a sorry state of affairs all around, but Intel is better than AMD. I write this on an AMD rig and after spending way too much money getting it going.
  - zrm 6y ago
    It's not that the chipsets are bad. The chipsets are fine. But that used to be how motherboards differentiated themselves. When the standard was two USB ports, one company would offer six. Not all boards had audio support and of the ones that did, some were better than others. All that is integrated now so every board with a given chipset is basically the same. Then they have to compete more aggressively on price, and the way they get the price down is by using cheaper heatsinks and spending less time developing firmware and things like that. The Intel boards have no immunity from that. The ratings there are just as bad. The older Intel boards were better but so were the older AMD boards.
rasz 6y ago
chipsets arent even electrically connected to memory in modern computers, so umm?
LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago
I'm with you in parts. But for someone who built so many systems, the fan thing should be a non-issue. Just get a mechanically fitting replacement from somewhere, be it aliexpress, or some industrial supplier who serves end-users. The proprietary fans aren't magical pixie dust. Should be 5 to 15$ a piece, depending on the quality. Just don't source them from the usual PC-places. THOSE are ghettos, caring and catering about nothing else but shiny LED bling bling g (The same applies to laptops, so far i've never came across one which hadn't a label or engraving that told me all i need to know for choosing the right replacement.)

by scurvy 6y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

What are you on? >If you're used to slapping in name-brand memory to a board and booting it up[...] Yeah, I am and that's exactly what I did with a new Ryzen CPU. How is this shit the top comment?

scurvy 6y ago
Mobo makers are hiding behind their QVL rather than making a functioning product. "Sorry, we only tested this version of Crucial memory, not that version." Never mind the fact that they use the same in-house Crucial stuff underneath, changes are largely chip packaging, etc. Almost all of the memory on the market comes from one of the last 5 companies actually making DRAM (not counting Shenzen specials). Anything from Crucial, Samsung, Hynix, etc should work. It's JEDEC DDR4 compatible. Period. Hiding a bad product because a DIMM isn't on the QVL is low-class. I'm not even talking about XMP stuff. I'm talking about booting with basic 2400/2666 stuff. "Yeah that's good RAM but not on our QVL. Get bent."
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  >Mobo makers are hiding behind their QVL rather than making a functioning product. How do you go from, "one particular mobo from one manufacturer is bad" to "all mobo makers are bad" and you attribute some sneaky malicious motive behind this. That's too much anecdote and emotional spin for me.
  - scurvy 6y ago
    I'm saying the AMD chipsets are bad, the mobo manufacturers don't really do anything different from each other these days, and they're hiding behind the very few parts that they qualify for their boards. If the RAM comes from a brand name, it should work in the motherboard regardless of QVL. Don't get these problems on AMD server/workstation platforms. You don't get them anywhere on Intel. But hey, the main article here also gave the nod to Intel in chipset/driver so I must just be all emotional spin.

na85 6y ago

Conversely, when I built a gaming rig last year I just slapped some Kingston memory, a Vega 64, and a Ryzen onto my x470 and everything Just Worked. But then I'm not an overclocker and the only time I go into the BIOS is when something breaks and/or I need to change the boot order. Maybe the quality control is what's at issue?

scurvy 6y ago
QC could definitely be an issue. If you built yours last year, it was probably with a 2000-series Ryzen? Those were easier to work with given the gear at the time. The 3000-series and x470's are definitely a problem. Here's a clip of someone with a lot of time on his hands who says, "Oh yeah just let it boot loop for 7-10 minutes then it will finally work."[0] Honestly come on, that's not right. There's still something with what's in the inventory pipeline. If you read the negative reviews, you'll see reports of "I RMA'd twice and only the third board worked." Not one or two and more than a few. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HstBneFf4g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HstBneFf4g
- rumanator 6y ago
  > Here's a clip of someone with a lot of time on his hands who says, "Oh yeah just let it boot loop for 7-10 minutes then it will finally work."[0] If you read the comments you'll find a lot of people stating 9 months ago that the problem is fixed with a BIOS update.

neogodless 6y ago

Is this a thing? I know it's anecdotal but three friends and I all built systems with X470 chipsets (some 2700X and one with a 3900X) and none of us had any issues whatsoever. This is the first I've heard of anything beyond the need for cooling for the X570.

Exmoor 6y ago

This is all pretty much FUD. > x570 -> Requires active cooling (fans) on the chipset because it throws off too much heat. The proprietray fan will die and your motherboard needs replacing. AMD does require fans on the chipsets for X570 boards, but different board makers have treated this differently. My understanding is that some boards don't spin it up unless you're putting some serious PCIE 4.0 bandwidth in. Either way, "The fan will die and needs replacing" may be true someday (as it would be with any fan), but is not a guarantee. >x470 -> Don't even look at your memory the wrong way if you want it to boot. Also, you need an older gen Ryzen/Athlon to update the BIOS to something that works with Ryzen 3000. Sure, there are stickers all over the box touting 'Ryzen 3000 compatibility!' but that's only after you update the BIOS. The BIOS the board ships with won't work at all. First gen Ryzen (1000 series chips) had some memory compatibility issues, but 2000 and 3000 chips haven't had many issues. It's true that you needed to do a BIOS upgrade on x470/B450 boards when 3000 series chips were released, but those stickers indicate that the board maker installed a newer BIOS and they should work out of the box. Unless you manage to find an X470 board that's been sitting on the shelf since before last July any x470 board you buy today is extremely likely to be compatible with all currently released Ryzen chips out of the box. > b450 -> Dicier to run new stuff on such an older platform. The implementations are supposedly power weak for higher core count 3900/3950 CPUs. 3000 series chips use a smaller process and are more power efficient per-core than 2000 and 1000 series chips, so you should have no issue running an 8 core chip in a B450 board. 12-core and 16-core chips might have some issues, but who buys a $79 motherboard and sticks a $500/$900 CPU in it?

scurvy 6y ago
>First gen Ryzen (1000 series chips) had some memory compatibility issues, but 2000 and 3000 chips haven't had many issues. It's true that you needed to do a BIOS upgrade on x470/B450 boards when 3000 series chips were released, but those stickers indicate that the board maker installed a newer BIOS and they should work out of the box. Unless you manage to find an X470 board that's been sitting on the shelf since before last July any x470 board you buy today is extremely likely to be compatible with all currently released Ryzen chips out of the box.< I went through a pair of x470 Taichi's from Amazon last month. Both had non-compatible BIOS that wouldn't work with 3000-series. One so old that Dr Debug wouldn't even do anything. Just blank. It's not just me. Read the negative product reviews of almost any x470 boards, and you'll see memory and non-POST issues very recently (followed by the response macro from mfg'er saying everything is fine just use 1 DIMM, etc). It's very much a crapshoot with AMD chipsets. You get a good one and everything's great. You get a few bad ones and you're stuck in swap/return/RMA hell. Also, how can it be FUD when it's exactly what I went through? Edit: The "Ryzen 3000 compatible" stickers do NOT mean it will work out of the box. It means that it CAN work...after you update the BIOS with an old CPU. AMD will offer you a CPU "boot kit" to get it going, but you're risking on missing out on many 30 day return windows with shipping, covid19, processing, etc. Avoid it all and just get an Intel until the next refresh.

jsgo 6y ago

Can't speak for anyone else, but I have a 570 board I think (MSI, I think, Phantom Gaming 4) with 2700x CPU. I have 4 sticks of 16GB ECC RAM (can't remember brand either, looked at the PG4's page where it lists compatible RAM) and they worked fine. I don't know if the fact that I was looking at said recommended list is what negates the issue you're talking about, but I had minimal issues in my build (mine was from also including a PCIe to 8 SATA port card. Moved the main drive off of it, installed the drivers and started working fine). Initially tried to do a Windows VM w/ GeForce 1080 but scrapped it after driver issues with the device in VM (apparently, Nvidia doesn't want non-Quadra GPUs in VMs).

nitsky 6y ago

I have had an X570 with a 3900X for a few months. Everything has worked perfectly so far.

bitL 6y ago

Add in x399, so many problems I had with ASUS Zenith Extreme I didn't see since original Athlon days.

jchw 6y ago

For anyone wondering about anecdotes to the contrary, I slapped random DDR4 DIMMs into my x470 no problem whatsoever. I heard of issues with original Ryzen, but not 3000, and you’re probably best ignoring the FUD and just going for it. (FWIW: I’ve built 2 Ryzen 2000 and 2 Ryzen 3000 boxes, all on x470 and B450. No RAM issues.)

zrm 6y ago

> Since many are doubting what I went through It's not that people are doubting your experience, it's that the Intel boards aren't any better. Many of the Intel boards also need a BIOS update to support later CPUs than they were originally released with, when they support them at all. DDR4 memory is finicky as heck. People end up having to RMA Intel boards all the time. It's largely caused by the motherboard makers losing the ability to differentiate themselves. Half of what used to be on the motherboard is now integrated into modern CPUs and the other half is in the chipset which is now also made by the CPU manufacturer. Two motherboards with the same chipset are largely fungible so they have to compete on price and the quality suffers. It's a general problem and buying any consumer motherboard these days is kind of a crapshoot. Here's a motherboard with 5 eggs and 50 reviews: https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813121180 https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813121180 It's a Pentium 4 motherboard from ~15 years ago. See if you can find a current generation Intel motherboard on there with 5 eggs from half that many reviews. I don't see any.

scurvy 6y ago
I understand what you're saying about the P4 boards and that largely echos what I'm saying. The vendor chipsets are bad, AMD's are worse than Intel's, and there's not much a mobo vendor can do. Intel boards do need upgrades to work with newer CPU's. This is true. But their updates actually work when they say they add support. Go back to July 2019 and read all the forum posts and YouTube videos of everyone complaining about Ryzen 3000, "Well Gigabyte said this release works...but it doesn't." And on and on. It's a sorry state of affairs all around, but Intel is better than AMD. I write this on an AMD rig and after spending way too much money getting it going.
- zrm 6y ago
  It's not that the chipsets are bad. The chipsets are fine. But that used to be how motherboards differentiated themselves. When the standard was two USB ports, one company would offer six. Not all boards had audio support and of the ones that did, some were better than others. All that is integrated now so every board with a given chipset is basically the same. Then they have to compete more aggressively on price, and the way they get the price down is by using cheaper heatsinks and spending less time developing firmware and things like that. The Intel boards have no immunity from that. The ratings there are just as bad. The older Intel boards were better but so were the older AMD boards.

rasz 6y ago

chipsets arent even electrically connected to memory in modern computers, so umm?

LargoLasskhyfv 6y ago

I'm with you in parts. But for someone who built so many systems, the fan thing should be a non-issue. Just get a mechanically fitting replacement from somewhere, be it aliexpress, or some industrial supplier who serves end-users. The proprietary fans aren't magical pixie dust. Should be 5 to 15$ a piece, depending on the quality. Just don't source them from the usual PC-places. THOSE are ghettos, caring and catering about nothing else but shiny LED bling bling g (The same applies to laptops, so far i've never came across one which hadn't a label or engraving that told me all i need to know for choosing the right replacement.)